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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Homeschooling Tidbits

Another week of school is wrapped up at the MeYeR house and as they say, "All's well that ends well" Right? This week was a tiny bit Topsy Turvy, but we managed to get a good amount of work done, have some fun and still get our other things done. In our MFW curriculum, we are focusing on geography all year, with this month focusing on North America and this week and last focusing even more on Mexico. We've learned songs they like to sing, food they like to eat, the capital city, the agricultural aspects, the major religion and language, how to color the flag and what the colors of the flag stand for and many other interesting tidbits about Mexico...many of which, I'm humbled to say, I didn't know before...oops! (Education is SO wasted on the young) We've added a new starting and ending tradition to school. Every day we take turns finding things on our world map that hangs at the back of the classroom...everything for the obvious like the Pacific Ocean, to tiny little things that I've never even noticed before (geography is NOT my forte) The boys really love it. Even Derek tries to get in on the fun, I give him something obvious and then give him hints like what the first letter is and what direction to look, etc. It's fun...and a great way to learn the map. The older boys can hunt if given a certain line of longitude or latitude, or even just what hemisphere or continent to look in and such. I'm really pleased that they are enjoying it so much...they cheer when I say it's time for MFW...WOW! Even for book basket time, Pat will sit and pore over the atlas that I checked out from the library for hours at a time. And this is my child that several people have insisted has ADD or ADHD and needs to be medicated. NO, he needs to be interested! : ) The blessings of homeschooling...they are numerous! On the flip side, our 'core' subjects of math and language arts aren't going quite as well, and I still get a BOO HISS now and then...but we are slowly working our way through it and are making progress. I'm trying not to think about how long this school 'year' will take at the rate we are going, but for now, I'm happy with any type of progress. David will be having some extra study time now that I'm working on Saturdays at the gym...so after he is done working out his muscles, he can exercise his brain while I work. Still pondering where to squeeze in a few extra hours for Pat without him noticing that much...LOL! David seems to be catching on in the Language area, but Pat is still struggling with long division. He understands the concept, but the amount of time it takes to solve one is frustrating for him. We will get there, it's just taking a tad longer than either of us expected. But, we are plugging away at it. As my good friend Rose told me once, "If you sling mud up against a wall for long enough, eventually it will stick." So, in other words, if I keep teaching it and working with him, eventually he will get it. So we may skip ahead in the book to something else and come back to it later...and I'm OK with that these days. Anywho, I'm rambling on and on...suffice it to say that we accomplished 'enough' to make us all happy this week and the boys are looking forward to a short week next week since Pat's birthday is Monday and we don't do school lessons on Fridays. Have a great week everyone, I don't know about you all, but I'm really enjoying this!Blessings,Kristy